ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This paper describes the further development and psychometric properties of an instrument to measure cancer patients' reasons to want complete or limited information: the Considerations Concerning Cancer Information questionnaire (CCCI). Understanding cancer patients' reasons to want complete or limited information will provide the physician with information that enables him or her to tailor information giving. METHODS: CCCI's content validity, internal structure, and convergent validity were investigated among 145 cancer patients, new to radiotherapy. RESULTS: Underlying reasons for information preference among cancer patients were derived from existing qualitative studies, narratives, and interviews. This resulted in the CCCI containing two parts: reasons to favor complete information disclosure and reasons to prefer only limited information about disease and treatment. The four identified dimensions to prefer information consist of: sense of control, expectations of others, anxiety, and autonomy. The four dimensions for reasons to give up on acquiring information consist of: avoidance, optimism, comprehension, and not wanting to be a burden. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the measurement model provided good fit to the data. Scales had good internal consistency, satisfactory item-total correlations corrected for overlap and satisfactory convergent validity. CONCLUSIONS: These findings confirm evidence of the reliability and validity of the CCCI for use in cancer care. Researchers and health-care providers can use the instrument to assess cancer patients' reasons to want complete or limited information and provide tailored care.
